Identity politics in India’s north-east

How green is my valley?

The BJP promises to sniff out intruders in exotic Assam

FOLLOWING the crooked finger of the Brahmaputra river east and north
towards its Tibetan origin, Assam looks like no other place in India.
Its lush riverine lands have attracted incomers since ancient times. The
result is a medley of peoples of varied languages, dress, cuisines—and
political interests.
Yet in the current state election the prize will go either to the
incumbent Congress party or to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of the
prime minister, Narendra Modi. For the first time, it is making inroads
into India’s north-east, as the spectre of illegal immigration from
Bangladesh threatens to realign politics in the BJP’s favour. The third
parties that represent specific Assamese groups have been shunted into
supporting roles, setting the stage for a battle royal between India’s
two chief national parties. Should the BJP win in Assam, which with 33m
people is the biggest of the north-east’s seven states, the party will
be able to claim a brand that now works in every corner of the country.

Mr Modi’s familiar emphasis on the economy goes down well in Assam.
But turning the state’s complicated human terrain to the advantage of
his party, which has its roots in the Hindi-speaking north and west,
requires attention to local detail. The Assamese are anxious to preserve
their cultural identity, a mix that combines the easternmost
Indo-European stock with ethnic groups of Tibeto-Burman and Tai origin
(ie, related to present-day groups in Thailand and Laos), clusters of
endemic tribes, and also the “tea tribes” brought by the British from
east-central India to work plantations. The BJP’s standard appeal to
Hindu-first Indian nationalism never found a wide audience in a hybrid
state with occasionally secessionist tendencies.

But Assam also happens to be 34% Muslim, more than any state bar
Jammu and Kashmir. Over the past quarter-century the proportion of
Muslims has grown rapidly, even as the proportion of Assamese speakers
has dipped below 50%. Here the BJP’s strategist, Amit Shah, scented
opportunity, claiming in November that the state government was
conspiring with a smaller Muslim party, the All India United Democratic
Front, to let Bangladeshis pour over the border and change the
demographics in the party’s favour. Bangladesh, Mr Modi has also
claimed, sounding like an Indian Donald Trump, was sending intruders
over the border; his government, given power in the state, would round
them up and kick them out. Bengali-speaking Muslims feel threatened,
even though many live in communities that have been in Assam for
generations, if not centuries. Many have decamped from Congress, their
usual party, to the Muslim third party, because it is devoted to their
protection.
Though the greatest number of the state’s Bengali-speaking Muslims
are descendants of immigrants who arrived under British supervision in
the first decades of the 20th century, no one really knows how many have
entered Assam illegally since Bangladesh was founded in 1971.
Supposedly to determine the number, a National Register of Citizens is
being compiled—for Assam only.
Publication of its findings has been postponed several times before
the election and will not happen now until after the vote is declared on
May 19th. The chances are that relatively few Bangladeshis will be
decreed to be in Assam and due for deportation. After all, why would
great numbers of poor Bangladeshis want to move to Assam in the first
place? Its living standards have improved greatly under the government
of the chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, yet they still lag far behind those
of Bangladesh. Still, that truth sits uncomfortably with those keen to
work up communal divisions for electoral gain.

Map of L K Advani's Rath Yatra of 1990

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